Mark Thomas: Showtime from the Frontline

Lakin McCarthy in association with Theatre Royal Stratford East

Mark Thomas: Showtime from the Frontline

About

Name the comedian who might say 'I wonder if I can set up a comedy club… in a refugee camp... in Palestine?' Of course, it’s Mark Thomas. And that is exactly what he tries to do.

Dodging cultural and literal bullets, Israeli incursions and religion, Mark and his team set out to run a comedy club and put on two nights in Jenin in the West Bank. Only to find that it is not so simple to celebrate freedom of speech in a place with so little freedom.

Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold for the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade during the Second Intifada, is not a place synonymous with laughs. But it is also home to the Jenin Freedom Theatre and to people with a wealth of stories to tell.

Mark tells this story alongside Faisal Abualheja and Alaa Shehada, two performers, actors and now aspiring comics from the Jenin Club. This is a story about being yourself in a place that wants to put you in a box. Funny, moving and necessary. Mark says, it’s the nearest he will ever get to Alan Parker’s ‘Fame’.